In 2018, I published a poetry collection called the last four years.
That book is a time capsule of my high school experience – the raw, searing aches of growing up. It was in turns outrageously honest and elusive, dizzy and awkward and confessional. At the time that I published it, I was an anxious high school senior and I was still in the closet. I had just been accepted into a college in Boston and I was leaving my small mountain town in North Carolina to live in the city for the first time. My creative writing teacher shared a quote from Rainer Maria Rilke that sums up how I’ve spent the last three years since then: “Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart…the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now.” My time since publishing TLFY has been spent living through every question and grappling with every strange and frightening and hopeful answer. What I have come back to, again and again, is my connection to the earth. To the mountains I come from, that I keep returning to. The roots that give me the strength to grow branches.What does it mean to be a queer, neurodivergent woman living in the mountains of Appalachia? How is my home being affected by climate change and a carbon-based economy – and how can I stand in solidarity with indigenous groups that have long been fighting to prevent this destruction? What can I do to oppose the violence that is still being committed against the Appalachian mountains? I don’t have any perfect answers. But I’ve been living through the questions. rootlines is the result. I am so grateful and excited to announce that Wilde Press will be publishing my sophomore poetry collection. The book is coming out on April 21st at 8:30 PM EST. I can’t freaking wait for you to see it. You can pre-order your copy here. All pre-ordered copies will be distributed directly by me, not through Wilde Press, and all the profits will go directly to the Indigenous Environmental Network.
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Authorkelsey day is a young award winning poet who grew up in the blue mountains of north carolina. she has received recognition for a collection of short stories, as well as two novels she published at the ages of 11 and 13. today she is studying creative writing in boston, massachusetts. Archives
March 2021
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